Design of Convolution Encoder and Reconfigurable Viterbi Decoder

Error-correcting convolution codes provide a proven mechanism to limit the effects of noise in digital data transmission. Convolution codes are employed to implement Forward Error Correction (FEC) but the complexity of corresponding decoder's increases exponentially with the constraint length K. Convolution encoding with Viterbi decoding is a powerful FEC technique that is particularly suited to a channel in which the transmitted signal is corrupted mainly by Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN). In this paper, the authors present a convolution encoder and Viterbi decoder with a constraint length of 3 and code rate of 1/2.